You guys aren't thinking like the general public. Think of all the Core owners who have never used Live. What do they need the hard drive for?

What if they try Live after a while (Silver is free, so why not?) and find there's a lot of stuff they'd like to download, if they only had the room?

Of course that'll be the case for some people, but if someone less lazy than me can find that article that was floating around, millions of people aren't connecting their 360s online at all, not even for Silver access.

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If a $100 price difference scared them off of the Premium system, when their memory card fills up do you really think they'll choose a $90 hard drive over just buying another memory card for $25?

You're assuming that core purchasers will *never* have an extra $100, which isn't necessarily the case. $300 now and $100 down the road is more palatable for some than $400 up front.

Of course this is the case for many people as well. I was just illustrating that while buying a hard drive is the blatantly obvious choice for us logically minded gamers who follow the industry in our spare time, there's a huge population of people that think very differently than us. Walk by the preorder pickup line outside a Gamestop when Grand Theft Auto 4 is released and you'll get a peek at...the other side.

Because you risk splintering the market. Why piss off customers who invested in the Core unit by forcing them to spend some amount more for a HDD?

I'd be interested to know how many Core owners *don't* have a hard drive by this point... there can't be that many.

Exactly. Especially since the memory cards don't hold that much data (especially the ones released when the console launched).

You guys aren't thinking like the general public. Think of all the Core owners who have never used Live. What do they need the hard drive for? If a $100 price difference scared them off of the Premium system, when their memory card fills up do you really think they'll choose a $90 hard drive over just buying another memory card for $25?

Wouldn't that be a big "if" statement, like "If SUNNY=1; Goto TURN_THE_GODDAMNED_LIGHTS_OFF"?

I would think the textures for windows etc are pretty reusable ... I mean reflective translucent is reflective translucent regardless of the light intensity, right? I think they're talking about all of the textures for roads, buildings, barriers etc.

They should just license the Unreal 3 engine and mod the F#$% out of it.

If you're designing this storefront (from PGR1), do you design each and every one of the lights and signs as a light source to determine how much the merchandise, interior walls, and storefronts light up by day or by night, or do you just slap a whole new texture up for the building? Multiply this by the number of buildings you see in a city-based racing game.

Anyone who buys the Core for $70 less than the Premium should be beaten senseless with it

Buying the Core has exactly one use - if you intend to (pay too much for) buy the 120GB HD. Beyond that, it's a useless system that developers should not be forced to support anymore.

I agree that the Core is a waste of money, but don't forget the numbers of how many 360 owners have never taken it online--wasn't it even as high as 50% or more that have never connected to Live? These people aren't using their drives for demos, patches, extra content, or XBLA games. If the Core price advantage wasn't negated so much by the need for a memory card (and the inevitable increase in HDD-required games), the Core would really be all they need.

Ehh..I think we will get to the point real soon where single dvd games will start seriously limiting developers for 360, I really do.

Real soon, as in...right now with PGR4 and GTA4?

Sony would be real smart to start paying developers to pack lots of extra content in the PS3 versions of cross-platform titles. Imagine if it was Sony instead of Microsoft that paid Rockstar to create exclusive extra episodes, but included on the disc rather than being a download. "With over 5 times the storage of standard DVD, blu-ray on the PS3 gives developers like Rockstar the ability to yap yap yap."

They're putting so much on the line to make blu-ray succeed, I don't get why they're not educating the public more on its advantages.

George is 500 lbs, he's 58 but looks 70, and he has at least 3 more books to write--keeping in mind that the last book took 5 years, the next book was already partially written and is still taking 3 years, and he's got an HBO miniseries to be involved in.

So in short, no official health problems listed, but this does not look like a picture of health:

Whatever. It looks great. Blizzard has never made a graphically impressive game.

I remember Warcraft II being pretty amazing for its time, though it may have just been because it was such a step up from Warcraft I. Specifically, I remember being wowed when I first saw (in a demo, I believe) the Orc town center in the snow.

WoW wow'd me the first bunch of times I played it.

I was just about to say the same thing. Even this long after release, WoW still seems to be holding it's own in the graphics department.

I think Thin_J means that Blizzard doesn't usually push the envelope of graphics technology. Warcraft 3, Diablo 2, Starcraft, and even World of Warcraft have less advanced graphics from a technical standpoint, but they make it up with great style and art direction (not to mention the ability to play the games smoothly on older computers). I pointed out Warcraft 2 because from what I remember it stands out as a Blizzard game that was on the cutting edge of graphics when it released.

Whatever. It looks great. Blizzard has never made a graphically impressive game.

I remember Warcraft II being pretty amazing for its time, though it may have just been because it was such a step up from Warcraft I. Specifically, I remember being wowed when I first saw (in a demo, I believe) the Orc town center in the snow.

Just finished it last night, great great finale to the series, and it will definitely make for an incredible movie.

I've been catching up on this impressions thread, and I'm surprised that nobody has yet mentioned the enormous symbolism in the book for real-world history:

Spoiler for Hiden:

Specifically, the repeated symbolism for WWII and the Holocaust. Voldemort on his quest to unite the world for the "pure blood" race and oust all the lesser races, despite not being of pure blood himself. The rounding up and imprisonment of those with un-pure blood. The pile of Muggle bones under the statue in the Ministry as a metaphor for the results of the death camps. The underground resistance fighting and raising morale under the oppressive occupation (Neville, Luna, and Ginny at Hogwarts), the inconsistent and difficult to tune in underground radio where people in hiding listen for the resistance's updates on the war, the dialogue along the lines of "why worry about him, he's just an elf" "don't you see, it's the elves first, then we're next" (parallel to the "first they came for, but I was not a" poem.

I think there were even more metaphors that stood out to me during reading that I can't currently remember.

Hey, good job Turtle and others doing the plan. As I train for a half marathon in October, I'm now running 4-5 miles as my "normal run", and next weekend I may try 7-8 miles as a new record for my "long run." While it was daunting at first, the half marathon is starting to seem like a very reachable distance, and I'm starting to seriously consider a goal to qualify for the Boston Marathon in the next few years.

And it all started with 60 seconds jogging, 90 seconds walking in week 1.

Did anyone here read Bill's post about Rock Band and specifically a subscription model for songs?

Thoughts? I'd gladly pay $20/month for such a service.

- shaggy

An attempt at $20/month would really kill my interest in Rock Band. I'm paying ~$260 for the instruments and games, no way am I going to pay another $240 a year for the songs. A subscription fee or very overpriced individual song downloads are pretty much the only potential deal breakers for me at this point with Rock Band.

I'm trying to remember what my first PC game was. It was on one of the old IBMs with the nuclear attack-proof keyboards. I'm thinking Miner 2049er, Snack Attack, Moon Patrol, Jungle Hunt, Bump'N'Jump, Paratrooper...

Wait, I remember. I'm pretty sure I started with Rocky's Boots.

This brings back memories:

Though I think that must be a more advanced version. I don't remember it having colors that good, more like magenta and cyan.

Star Soldier (NES®, 1 player, Rated E for Everyone - Mild Fantasy Violence, 500 Wii Points): The standard for vertically scrolling shooters, Star Soldier is the original game that spawned all of the titles in the long-running Soldier series. Go inside a floating space station inhabited by a giant computer known as Starbrain. Your mission: to stop Starbrain's galactic invasion by piloting Caesar, a new, compact space fighter through 16 deadly stages. Collect power capsules to increase three different attributes of your ship: firepower, movement speed and defensive shields. Blast wave after wave of approaching enemies or use the innovative Trap Zone feature to fly beneath a land mass and avoid incoming fire. Conquer each stage to make your way to the final confrontation with Starbrain.Dynamite Headdy™ (Sega Genesis, 1 player, Rated E for Everyone - Comic Mischief, 800 Wii Points): Headdy, a toy with a detachable head, arrives in North Town to find that the evil puppet king Dark Demon is causing serious problems. Dark Demon is gathering up all the puppets in town and turning some into his own evil minions, while eliminating the rest of the puppets that aren't good enough to join his legions. Headdy is captured and is targeted for the incinerator, but escapes in the nick of time. Now he's got to save the town. To do so, Headdy has to take on all manner of bad guys and even has to contend with his lifelong nemesis, Trouble Bruin the bear. Can Headdy overcome all his foes and take down Dark Demon?

Drop Off (TurboGrafx16, 1 player, Rated E for Everyone, 600 Wii Points): Brave five rounds of haunting, nightmarish dreams in this take on the classic arcade puzzler. To save his dearly beloved from the malicious demon that controls her dreams and holds her captive, our brave hero plunges himself into the nightmare to vanquish this evil foe. Deftly use the arrow items and control the angle of the ball to shatter the blocks that descend from the top of the screen. Set your sights on the joints holding the blocks together and knock off multiple blocks in one exhilarating blow. As you drop more and more blocks, their shapes will change, allowing you to earn bonus points. You must use your concentration and reflexes to defeat the demon and save your beloved.

I haven't really seen this, but have heard of it.... Do they actually get the guy to ask for sex or something? If sex is never brought up in the conversations, could they still be charged? Also is this show entraping people in any way?

They get the guy to make his motive clear in the online chat logs, which the program has read out loud with the voice actors giggling every time 'LOL' is written. So they've got pretty much the entire case built before the guy shows up. When they arrive at the house, the bait girl says hi briefly and then goes to another room to "get drinks" or "change." Chris Hanson comes out, the people seem to think they have to do whatever he tells them to even when he says he's not a cop, they get a minute or two of therapy from Chris, cameras come out with a flourish, then the guy walks out the door where a man dressed as a garden bush runs up and tackles him.

They say they avoid entrapment, but when not all of the chat logs are available--as in the Texas case--the defense could always make the argument that the entrapment happened in the missing log.

So, I won one of the 200 beta accounts....three weeks ago. I still haven't gotten to see the game. I have a beta key, I've entered my beta key, but all that does is toss me in with (literally) 10,000 other people with beta accounts who have been waiting far longer than I have to get into the game. If I'm interpreting the posts on their public forum correctly, they promised at some point that 10,000 people would get in by the end of July, 1k were let in last week, and another 1k a few days ago. I'm hoping that they let the other 8k in over the next few days, but I'm not going to hold my breath.

If I'm feeling bitter for thinking I was winning access to the beta and then being given a ticket to a queue of 10k people, I can hardly imagine how some of the active posters on the POTBS forums who have had beta queue accounts for over a year feel.

It just seems like such an odd way of doing things. Why give all these people "beta keys" if all you're going to do is cherry pick the people with certain computer specs or however else they've been choosing people these past years. The same effect could be accomplished by just choosing from a pool of "beta applications," without giving all these people false hope.

I'll probably catch it in a matinee in the next few weeks, but yeah my interest level is pretty low for someone who used to be a Simpsons fan of the first order. If it was announced that they used a screenplay that was written circa 4th or 5th season, I'd be camped at the front of the line tonight.